Huyler's Landing
Lower Closter or New DockHere a British invasion force of 5,000 troops commanded by Lord Cornwallis landed before dawn on November 20, 1776. Guided by three Bergen County residents, Joseph Hawkins, Isaac Perkins, and John Aldington, they climbed the rough road to the top of the cliffs and marched south to capture Fort Lee. At sunrise, Lt. John Clifford of Heard's Brigade, New Jersey State Troops, saw them, commandeered a horse, and alerted the garrison at Fort Lee. About 3,000 soldiers, led by Generals George Washington and Nathanael Greene, retreated over the Hackensack River at New Bridge on their route to the relative safety of Pennsylvania. This landing place was used in later raids and finally blocked with felled trees in 1780.
Sponsored by the Bergen County Historical Society, 2019Huyler's LandingFrom colonial times, local farmers brought their harvests down a steep road they built through a natural break in the cliffs to the dock here for shipping to New York City markets. After Peter Huyler improved the road and dock about 1840, this place became known as Huyler's Landing. Through the 1870s, a multiracial, multiethnic community of boatmen, ship-builders, fishermen, quarrymen, and their families lived and labored here. Sloops, steamboats, and smaller vessels transported people,
firewood, farm goods, fish, and stone between Huyler's Landing and ports along the Hudson. A few residents remained into the early twentieth century, after the Interstate Park Commission acquired the land.
Sponsored by the Bergen County Historical Society, 2019
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